I have no reason to believe that Ron Paul would not bring all troops back from foreign bases or pardon all non0violent drug offenders, looking back at his voting record. He can;t cut a trillion from the budget on his own...but he can veto spending bills that have unconstitutional spending. Forcing congress to require a super-majority to pass a spending bill is great IMO.

No, he isn't going to wave a land and turn this country into a libertarian utopia. He is one man. But frankly having someone in there who will veto 99% of that garbage that comes out of Congress is enough for me.

danivon wrote:The real question at hand in this thread is who will win the GOP candidacy. Romney looks like the favourite still. Santorum might snatch Iowa after a late surge, but does he have the staying power for a sustained challenge? I don't think so. Each of the Great Right Hopes has faded.

Wow. I thought Santorum had a chance, but to be only 8 votes short of victory in Iowa is pretty good going.

Not sure he can repeat that in NH though

Guapo wrote:ARJ is correct to predict that Perry will perform better than expected. In fact, he's my pick for the media's "comeback kid" after Iowa. I've already predicted a Paul win, but here's my top 4.

1. Paul
2. Romney
3. Perry
4. Gingrich

I could see NG dropping out of 4th for Santorum. However, I think that Paul will win with 25% or so, with Romney and Perry fighting it out for second. Romney's struggle to keep second after 5 years of campaigning will kill him if he doesn't win NH as handily as it appears he will now.

Not to pick on Guapo, because we were all wrong, at least two weeks ago. Santorum? Who would have thunk it? That's the thing about retail politics, most of the voters in Iowa probably saw Santorum at one time or another during the last several months, and it made a difference for him.

Doctor Fate wrote:I think it's:

1. Paul
2. Romney
3. Gingrich
4. Santorum

It is possible that Gingrich may drop lower than 3. If that happens, he will have to win South Carolina, or he will drop out.

If Santorum doesn't finish at least a close 4th, he's out. Bachmann will drop out.

Because of the unique structure of the caucus, I think Paul will do better than you believe. His followers will be there no matter what and they will not change their vote.

That was December 20.

Considering this was really before Santorum took off, I think I did okay. It sure looks like Bachmann is out. Gingrich is only staying in because he's bitter. I think Santorum is more likely to win in SC than Newt.

Huntsman needs to finish second in NH. If he doesn't, he has to pray for a Romney slide, which I can't see. The irony in Gingrich's anger is that it helps Romney by splitting the conservative vote.

Geez, Steve. Let someone else toot your horn. I was going to say that you had the closest pick to the correct iowa result. Well done.

A few things:

1. Santorum surged because of a Fox News push at the right time--nothing more, nothing less.

2. This is part of the strategy that I don't think many Republicans are paying attention to: winning delegates.

Kudos to Steve for his predictions.

Has anyone else been paying attention to the vast amount of money that Romney's "independent" PACS have spent on negative ads. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... d-spending

Final ad figures from Iowa show that a pro-Mitt Romney "super PAC" outspent Romney's own presidential campaign by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, with almost all the money dedicated to harsh attack ads against Newt Gingrich that succeeded in causing the former Speaker's poll numbers to drop precipitously.

Restore Our Future, the super PAC founded by three former Romney political aides, spent $2.8 million on ads in Iowa, nearly twice as much as the $1.5 million spent by Romney's own campaign,

They did some work on both Perry and Gingrich. Those two are deeply flawed candidates anyway, but the negative ads were relevant in their decline. Santorum is also flawed as a candidate; in any case he will be next in the line of fire of the Romney PACs.

Guapo:

This is part of the strategy that I don't think many Republicans are paying attention to:

I do know that Romney and his inner circle are paying a lot of attention to this. They are well funded and well organized, and even if Romney is not widely popular, he will get the delegates he needs from organization and spending.

So if Paul can finish third in the vote but still end up with a majority of delegates (I'll believe it when I see it), doesn't this make the voting a complete farce ?

I don't think that he can end up with a majority of them in Iowa, but CNN predicts that Romney, Santorum, and Paul will end up with 7 delegates each from Iowa.

Sassenach wrote:So if Paul can finish third in the vote but still end up with a majority of delegates (I'll believe it when I see it), doesn't this make the voting a complete farce ?

Well, Iowa is its own particular and peculiar situation. I don't think Paul will be able to do this elsewhere, if it even worked here.

If any political party is not prone to some kind of sneak attack, it's the GOP. They, I'm sure, have rigged the rules so that no insurgent can sneak his way to the nomination. The nominee will have won more delegates than anyone else or will be chosen in a smoke-filled room. He/she will not win by stealth. If Paul followers think they can outmaneuver Gravity, good luck to them!

ray

Has anyone else been paying attention to the vast amount of money that Romney's

Between PACs and his own spending it works out to about $143.26 a vote.

Despite, or perhaps because (?) of all the spending . Voter enthusiasm was a little lagging. Turnout was about half the Democratics caucus from 2008.
Gingrich now seems to have one focus only...destroying Romney... Bitter, bitter man.

Ray Jay wrote:They did some work on both Perry and Gingrich. Those two are deeply flawed candidates anyway, but the negative ads were relevant in their decline. Santorum is also flawed as a candidate; in any case he will be next in the line of fire of the Romney PACs.

I think Santorum will be a LOT harder to hit. Gingrich was easy. Perry took care of himself. Santorum is likeable, has a great family, is a social conservative, and a hawk. So far, I've only seen him get hit for pork barrel spending. I don't think that will damage him much.

The real question is can Romney be damaged enough to stop him from winning NH. I don't believe a GOP candidate has ever won Iowa and NH and failed to win the nomination.

As I said, Huntsman really has to come in second to be credible, or at least a very near third. If Santorum manages to be anywhere near the top three, he will be the clear non-Paul anti-Romney candidate.

With the compacted schedule, some candidates will be able to hang on longer than they would have in the past. Gingrich would have been roadkill 4 years ago. However, I think he can now stay in and see what happens in South Carolina.

My NH top three (early edition)

1. Romney
2. Paul
3. Huntsman
4. Gingrich
5. Santorum

I think Gingrich does some damage to Romney (via ads) and to Santorum (by staying in). Huntsman will drop out if he isn't near 20%.

Ray Jay wrote:Guapo:

This is part of the strategy that I don't think many Republicans are paying attention to:

I do know that Romney and his inner circle are paying a lot of attention to this. They are well funded and well organized, and even if Romney is not widely popular, he will get the delegates he needs from organization and spending.

I am not surprised. Interestingly, Romney has been the most "accepting" of Ron Paul's candidacy, and Paul has avoided much of the Romney bashing. I think that secretly they both want a brokered convention as the last two standing.

Sass, regarding the delegates, the system is a lot more complex. This article explains a bit more. The Ron Paul grassroots organization started to learn the delegate system in 2008. If you recall, there were battles in a few states over it. However, when Dr. Paul announced his Rally for the Republic, it took the sails out of the grassroots attempt to work in as delegates and "steal" the election for Paul. 2008 could have been a lot uglier if Ron didn't have his rival rally.

But this is something that I've been driving at. The grassroots organization is ready for the delegate process. So if Ron can maintain a 20-25% showing throughout the primaries, his presence at the convention is going to be stronger.

On another note, It's really a shame that Johnson chose to be short-sighted. He could have copied Huntsman's strategy (albeit less insulting to the Iowans) in NH and would have done well. I think the GOP also lost their opportunity for a stop-Paul, libertarian candidate.

Do you think that Paul will be able to maintain 20-25% though? Iowa and NH are both in their own ways 'maverick' states. The Republicans there like to think of themselves as being outside the mainstream and are wont to challenge it. And so they would appear to be fertile ground for a libertarian candidate.

But, Paul is not tracking at 20% in national polls of Republicans. More like 10-15%. The RCP average is currently 12.6%. for the Iowa caucus the RCP average was pretty much dead on Paul's tally of 21.4%, which suggests to me that as far as Ron Paul is concerned, the polls are not too far out.

Now, he's expected to get to about 20% in NH. Perhaps more can be squeezed out if people assume Romney is a shoe-in and so people can be more free with their votes. But in order to be up at that kind of level in later primaries, he's going to have to be benefiting quite a lot from the boost, and in states where social conservatism is a big player.

But I do think that Paul - if he sticks it out - will be able to take a fairly sizeable contingent to the Convention which could be used as a bargaining chip. Similarly, while Bachmann was right to pull out (if she could only come 6th in a State where she used to live and spent most of her campaigning, she's never going to be viable), the other Great Right Hopes should (if they are canny) stay in. They can endorse another candidate later on, and as long as they are picking up delegates they are building up a faction for the Convention. Romney is pretty much consistently in the top 2 but is only looking at about a quarter to a third of the vote. Winner-take-all states may not work for him if someone trends at the right time, and if enough people stay in he could easily be in the position of needing to win over delegations for other candidates.

It also doesn't rule out the possibility of a late-entry 'compromise' candidate coming out of the process. And if you know you can't win, but may be able to influence who does, they you'd stay in to ensure that their platform was as close to your own as you can get it.

Apparently, Perry has announced that he is staying in the race and looking at South Carolina.

Santorum's upset in Iowa can be tied directly to the Duggars.